Ruins
by reegars
Summary: After Shepard destroys the Reapers, she and Kaidan work to heal, rebuild, and live. Picking up where the destroy ending left off, they journey on together as the galaxy begins to pick up the pieces of their homeworlds. Follows the months and years after the war, focusing on Kaidan and Shepard but also touching on the lives of other crew members.
1. Chapter 1

The crew stood before the memorial wall. Silence hung heavy in the air, moments passing by impossibly slow; nobody dared to say a word. Anderson's nameplate hung below the Alliance insignia, placed there soon after they had reached Hackett and he'd given them the news. Found dead in the rubble of the Citadel. No word on Shepard yet. But the odds didn't look good.

Kaidan held the commander's nameplate in his hands, gazing down at the letters. None of it felt real. He felt the ache in his chest, the memories churning in his head, the sick feeling in his stomach, but it wasn't registering. He remembered the way she'd made him go with the Normandy. How he begged her not to leave him behind. But she needed to go, she needed to end the war. And he was too injured to help her do that.

He hated himself for letting her go on without him. He could still feel her hand on the side of his face, her thumb running across his cheekbone as he told her he loved her. They didn't say goodbye, but they both knew. It was the last time. He ran his thumb across part of her name, still lost in the thought of her. He ground his teeth and looked up. He was making his best efforts to hold his composure; the crew didn't need any more pain than they already had.

Slowly, he took a step forward. It was like moving through water. His blood pounded in his ears. _She can't be gone, she can't be. There has to be a way. _Another step. Another. Soon enough, he was standing before the looming memorial wall. He could almost feel the cold of the stone radiating off the wall and onto his skin. Goosebumps ripples over his arms and up to his neck. _There has to be a way._

He ran his hand over her name. _Shepard. _He wanted to say it aloud. He wanted to drown himself in the sound of it. He wanted to get lost in every last memory of her that he knew someday he would lose. His knees shook. _Shepard. _He looked at the wall, at all the names of the people they'd known and lost. She wasn't dead, not to him, not yet. It wasn't right, putting her name up on that wall when they hadn't even found her body yet.

Hope. He felt hope. He felt it deep in the pit of him, in his stomach, in his gut. It pulsed in his veins. It got down into the marrow of his bones. _Hope_. It was small. It was the smallest chance, the most impossible odds to be up against, but if she wasn't confirmed dead… She could be alive.

He looked up. And he nearly smiled.

"I… I'm not putting this up here until we know. For sure," he said. He turned to the crew, who stared back in silence. Liara's brow was knit in concern, taking a step towards him.

"Kaidan," she said softly. "It's highly unlikely that she—"

"It wouldn't be the first time Shepard overcame these kinds of odds," he said, gaining some confidence.

"But, Kaidan, she…"

"He's right," Joker interjected, looking up at the two of them. His green eyes were glazed over with sorrow and exhaustion. "Shepard never gave up on us. Why are we gonna give up on her?"

"We're not giving up, Jeff, it's just being realistic. You saw the conditions when we left, the chances of her surviving now are—"

"What were the chances of her coming back from the dead?" Joker said. He straightened up and looked at Liara.

"I suppose you are correct," she said quietly.

"We need to go back." Tali's voice came quiet from the side of the small crowd. Kaidan turned to look at her, a knot in his throat. He nodded quietly.

"We're going back," Kaidan said. Without Shepard on the ship, he was now first in command. And if they could get the Normandy systems online without EDI functional, (which Jeff, no doubt, could. The ship was his everything.) they'd be heading back to Earth as soon as possible.

The odds weren't great; they weren't even reasonable. But there was still hope that she was out there on the Citadel somewhere. Kaidan ran through every possible scenario he could think of as the crew dispersed to start work on getting the Normandy functional again. She'd probably be really hurt, if she was even alive. Would she be in the rubble? Would she already be found? Would she be there at all? What if the Crucible blew her into space? He shut his eyes and entered the elevator, rubbing his temples to get the thought out of his head. No, he wouldn't let himself think that way. The Citadel had the means to keep the ones inhabiting it alive. They had a chance. She had a chance.

He took the elevator up to her cabin and found the door unlocked. He walked through the room slowly, stopping at her desk. Datapads, most of them dead, lay on the floor and under the table. The fishtank was still intact and running on the wall. The colorful fish fluttered by slowly as if nothing had even happened. He approached the tank and hit the button on the wall to feed them. He continued through the cabin, stopping at the couch in the corner and trying to fend off the memories of the last night they'd shared together. He chewed the inside of his lip and turned away. The anxiety washed over him in waves, but he was determined not to submit to the pull. He took a seat on the edge of her bed and buried his face in his hands.

"Dammit, Shepard," he breathed. He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. Behind his lids, the memories of their last hours in private came back to him. His head spun. He found himself lost in the thought of her in seconds, suffocating in her scent, reeling from the sound of her voice. He laid down and buried his face in the sheets. A deep breath brought it all back. Her waking up in the middle of their sleep in his arms, a gasp taking her out of another nightmare. "_What's up?" _he'd asked hoarsely, still half-asleep. He'd never seen her so shaken. He didn't have to ask; he knew what was on her mind.

Once she'd calmed down and had gotten some water, she went back to sleep. He held her close as her eyes shut, but he found himself restless. He untangled himself from her and tiptoed to the bathroom. Cold water didn't change the bundle of nerves in his stomach, but it allowed for a little more clarity in his thoughts.

"_I can't lose her again,_" he tried to say to his reflection. His throat was suddenly tight.

He watched the rise and fall of her chest from the doorway of the bathroom. He felt it all, the fear, the anger, the anticipation. They knew the odds, and they knew that this night together was their last. But it didn't make it any easier.

Bringing himself back to reality, Kaidan shifted on his side of the bed, leaving room for her like she was somewhere on the decks below and would be up to sleep soon instead of

out there somewhere on the Citadel. Tears blurred his vision as he ran a hand over the empty sheets beside him. He lay there for a long time, too long for him to keep track of. He didn't want to believe that she could possibly be gone. He still didn't want to believe that that night had been their last. He shut his eyes and took in the quiet, stressed hum of the ship.

"Bridge to Major Alenko," Joker's voice, even more fatigued than last time, rang out over the speakers in the room. Kaidan sat up quickly, clearing his throat through his surprise.

"I'm here, Joker," Kaidan answered. His voice was weaker than he wanted it to be.

"We should be ready to fly in fifteen, orders?"

"Just get us back to Earth. The Citadel. ASAP," he said. "Do whatever it takes. But make sure the ship can handle it."

"Will do," Joker confirmed. "And Kaidan?"

"Yeah?"

"Take it easy, alright? I know it sounds impossible, but you've gotta keep a level head right now. She needs you to."

"Noted," he murmured.

"Over and out," Joker said, clicking off the call. Kaidan rose to his feet, legs shaking, and headed for the bridge.


	2. Chapter 2

The darkness was suffocating.

She wasn't sure what it was, the weight that she was feeling. It was black as an inkwell all around her. The air she was breathing, (if she was breathing,) was thick and rich with heat. Numbness overwhelmed her. The feeling of lifelessness slipped around her arms and legs and wound up around into her chest. It was a slow process. _Destroy, destroy, destroy._ The word was cycling through her mind, a chant, a song, like the only thing she could keep a grip on.

The last thing she remembered was their faces. She'd walked to her death with the poise she'd always promised she would have. But it didn't make her silent goodbye any easier. In the fire and impact she'd felt them there with her, the only people she would've ever wanted to experience it with. All of them. Her comrades, her sidekicks, her squad, her partners in crime. Her best friends. Joker's tip of his cap from his chair. Liara's blue eyes, full of kindness and mischief. Kaidan's lips, curled into her favorite crooked smile. She felt the echo of sadness in her chest and considered the sensation for a moment. Maybe she was alive.

Or maybe this was death. The darkness, the numbness, the suffocating warmth. Was this heaven? Was this hell? Was she somewhere in between? It felt familiar, almost. Nothing above her, nothing below her, darkness as far as she could tell. Suffocating. Silence. Nothingness. Maybe she was floating out in space somewhere. Would Miranda find her this time? What a sick thought. She wanted to laugh. It was over. She'd destroyed the Reapers, but it was over. Nothing left in her to keep going, anyway. She didn't dare open her eyes to see her surroundings. She didn't want to know. Her body started to drain away, all feeling gone, her thoughts growing dimmer by the moment. Was this the end? The beginning? Where was the light? A sharp pain in her midsection cut through her numbness with lightning-like precision. Heat was sticking to her. The dizzying blackness was too much.

_Don't leave me behind._

His voice was crystal clear in her mind. Without her permission, a burst of energy brought a sharp breath into her lungs. Her chest expanded and took in the thick air, full of ash and dust and the remains of the Citadel. Breathing. She was breathing and there was oxygen in her lungs. Her blood pumped in her veins and her heart started hammering back to life. The air came in and out of her in hitched gasps, but she was doing it. She was alive. Her eyes shot open against her will and she took in the scene around her. Rubble was everywhere. Black ash and dust stood almost suspended in the air. The heat was overwhelming; small pockets of fire blazed at random through the scraps of metal and rock. The Citadel stood in ruins, broken, but alive. Just like her.

Feeling came trickling back into her, slowly but steadily. Toes first, then her legs, her thighs… By the time the sensation came back to her hips she could barely breathe. The pain was stifling, the crushing and the weight, the burning of her singed flesh. She could barely take it. She opened her mouth to cry out but found her throat swollen shut. She gasped again and it brought a heaving cough through her lungs. It made hardly any sound but the gesture nearly tore the burnt insides of her airway to pieces. The numbness retreated from her fingers, which she tried to bend to test their strength but found she couldn't move them at all. Feeling returned to her arms and then her shoulders, spreading like literal wildfire over her back and chest. The burning was overpowering. It consumed all of her senses, swallowing her up and pushing any effort she could've made to move back down to stillness.

The rubble was pressing on top of her, crushing her, becoming harder and harder to bear by the moment. It forced down on one of her legs, another huge piece on her stomach and one on her arm and part of her chest. She couldn't move. She realized then that sure, she was alive, but she was trapped. Any movement in the area was far away, and she couldn't make a sound. She could tell from the blurriness of her vision and the way her head was becoming lighter that it she was losing blood from the wounds she knew were there. She'd bleed out soon without help.

Any hope she had from her breathing before was crushed swiftly by the ruins around her. There was really no chance of surviving. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a jagged metal spiral standing vertically where she assumed the center of pain was in her leg. She cringed and tried to regulate the hard spike in her breathing. Every breath was precious, and she needed to save her energy for surviving as long as she possibly could.

She'd thought she was ready to die. She wasn't.

Her goodbye to Kaidan was temporary. She'd let him go in her mind, but not in her heart, not in her soul. They were in too deep to give up. She never allowed herself to want a future, a life after the war with the man that she loved, but as she walked to her death and riddled her final decision with bullet holes she saw his face. His smile. His eyes. The promise she'd made him on the ground in London, saying she'd come back safe, saying she'd never leave him behind. She had to fight. He was out there somewhere. He had to be.

She forced another breath into her lungs, pushing back the pain that it brought to her chest. The muscles in her back burned and strained under the weight of her small movement. She heard the voices calling to each other, calling to survivors, in the distance. No noise came from her mouth. She shut her eyes and let out a little moan. It was the best she could manage.

She didn't want to die. But she was probably going to.

"_Hey, hey, hey… Where are you going?" _His voice was at her ear like he was sitting in the rubble next to her. Inher mind, he took her hands in his and put them flat against his chest. He held her wrists tenderly. The look in his eye was a rare one, but she recognized it. It was a mix of concern and pity, of love and anxiety. She was cutting past his defenses. And he already had hers torn down.

"_Alright, Kaidan…" _The smile that so forcefully took her lips was uncontrollable. She loved him. In the ruins of the Citadel, she stirred a small bit. The pain was terrible, but it kept her awake. In her cabin that night, she kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her back and carried her to her bed, _their _bed, and pulled her close. She shared herself with him that night in a way she never had before. It was by no means their first time, but in all her efforts to say goodbye to him, she let him in deep. He got down into the cracks of her heart and soul and solidified himself there. Tears welled in her eyes as she thought of them together. So prepared to die. So unprepared to let go of each other.

She wasn't going to let go now. She was alive, and the Reapers were not. She had to live. For his sake.

She opened her eyes and grunted aloud, trying to keep herself awake. The blackness was creeping into her vision slowly but surely; it wasn't the first time she'd encountered unconsciousness. If she wanted to live, she couldn't let it take her. But her lids were heavy, her body was succumbing back to numbness, and the short breaths coming in and out of her chest were becoming harder and harder to keep up.

"Kaidan." She wanted to say his name more than anything. It was trapped on her tongue, set to stay there wrapped up behind her lips forever. Her eyes fluttered shut once again and the warm dark took her under.


	3. Chapter 3

Kaidan found himself the war room, his hands positioned stiffly behind his back. His feet carried him back and forth before the comm. The helplessness and restlessness he felt was slowly starting to seep into his bones. He thought of her face, the lines of her cheekbones and the blues of her eyes; they were etched into his memory. Her body was a permanent fixture of his thoughts, a place he had gone to dwell ever since he'd fallen for her on the SR-1. He continued his path across the room, eyes darting to the comm every few moments, waiting for some word from Hackett, from _anyone, _that she was still breathing. They'd heard nothing so far.

"Kaidan…" Liara's quiet tone still managed to startle him in all his concentration. "Perhaps you should sit down, take a break. I can stay here and wait for a call…"

"No," he insisted quickly, bracing both of his hands on the bar next to the keyboard of the comm. "I'll wait. I've got nothing better to do, anyway."

"The stress is—"

He cut her off. "The stress is going to be here, whether I'm pacing in here or pacing in some other space of the ship." He steadied himself with a breath, still gripping the railing. "I think we both know that the odds are…"

Her footsteps echoed across the otherwise silent room as she met him at the comm. A careful hand found his shoulder in comfort. "You were the one telling me that she's beaten the odds before, just a few hours ago. You gave me hope. Don't tell me you are already giving up on her?" He could've sworn the asari's voice held a small smile, but he didn't dare look up.

"I'm not giving up on her-!" he said, muscles tensing. "I'm not. I would never."

"Then let yourself breathe. We both know she would hate to see you this way."

He exhaled as her hand dropped from his shoulder, leaving him a little more relaxed, but also feeling empty. The knot in his stomach started to knit through his chest and ball up in his throat. There wasn't much to say; there was only waiting to do. Waiting for a call, waiting to get to get back to the Citadel, waiting for something to happen. In the meantime, he found himself stuck in a purgatory of stress and lost hope, expecting the worst but secretly hoping that the woman that he loved so deeply still had breath coming in and out of her lungs.

"Any word on EDI?" he asked quietly, letting go of the railing and turning around to face his friend. He found her eyes to be dull and tired when he met them, drastically changed from their usual bright blue.

She shook her head solemnly. "Tali and a few others have been trying to recover her, but they've found no solution yet. Whatever the Crucible did, it touched all synthetics, not just the Reapers."

A small grunt came from his closed mouth. He leaned against the comm and folded his arms, letting a tense silence fall between the two of them.

"I have faith in her, Kaidan. And I know you do too… it's the faith that you've given me." Liara's eyes were soft in her solemnity. "And regardless of the outcome, we've won the war. She's done the impossible so that we can—"

"I really don't feel like being philosophic right now, if you don't mind," Kaidan said, harsher than he'd intended for his words to be. Her eyes fell to the floor. A small sigh came from him before he spoke again. "Liara, I didn't mean to…"

"It's alright," she said. "I understand. I suppose it's no comfort that our fears might be confirmed, I was only trying to see some good in the situation."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers, trying to calm the raging headache that was starting to emerge over the medigel and medication administered to him after he'd been evacuated from the beam. Breath came into his lungs, shallow and shaky as it was, just enough to keep him standing. All he could see was Shepard buried under some pile of rubble out there. It was better than the idea of her drifting out into the cold vacuum of space again. Still, he found little comfort in the idea that she was in the ruins of the Citadel somewhere. He could only hope that rescue crews were out searching for her, like Hackett had promised earlier.

A sudden ringing from the comm broke his train of thought. He jumped to attention. Liara's urgent eyes caught his for only a second as he scrambled to answer the call. They stood at the console, waiting for a picture or a voice to answer for all their anxiety. Slowly, a choppy Admiral Hackett filled the comm, casting a bluish glow about the room.

"Major Alenko, Doctor T'Soni," he regarded them both, sounding exhausted but somehow a bit lighter than the last time he had reached them.

"Tell me you have news, Admiral." Kaidan didn't bother with formalities. The bags under his eyes were weighing on him, heavier than ever.

Hackett folded his arms. "We found her," he said, and said nothing else.

The breath in Kaidan's lungs was suddenly gone. Liara stepped in swiftly. "Is she…"

"She's alive." Kaidan gripped the railing of the console to keep himself from collapsing. "Barely, but she's alive. We used the signal from her comm piece that you forwarded to us; without that, we might've never found her. She was under the rubble somewhere near the heart of the Citadel. She's lost a lot of blood, it's still touch-and-go, and there's no promising that she's going to make it. She's unconscious, being rushed to a field hospital down in New York. Less damage, easily accessible, better doctors… Major?"

Kaidan looked up at the image of Hackett, barely able to keep himself standing. "Yes, Admiral?" he offered, voice weak with relief.

"She's in good hands now, and they're doing everything they can. Hang in there." With a nod to Liara, he concluded his message with, "I'll see you all soon. Hackett out."

Liara pressed the button on the console to stop the connection. She wrapped one arm around Kaidan's waist. All the strength in her body channeled through her to hold him up, to tell him everything was going to be alright. "Kaidan," she murmured, pulling him closer. Falling away from the railing, he leaned into her, bringing his face to her shoulder. A sob without tears ripped from his lungs. "It's going to be alright. She's alive."

"She's alive," he echoed into her jacket. It still smelled of London; of ash and burning flesh and death. "Shepard…"

"We should tell the others." Liara was always the first to react logically. She squeezed Kaidan tightly, then let him go. He stood on shaking legs, scrubbing his tired eyes with his balled-up fists. "Come on."

Kaidan followed her from the war room and into the CIC, which was empty due to all available hands trying to work on something in Engineering to keep the ship running, or to try to help salvage EDI. Liara carried herself with purpose. The pair rushed to the bridge to tell Joker the news.

"She's alive," she announced breathlessly, before Jeff had the chance to even turn around.

"Are you serious?" he turned around, hands still on the console in front of him. He swallowed visibly, looking from Kaidan to Liara, then back to Kaidan. The major steadied himself on the wall, finding it more and more difficult to keep himself composed. The combination of relief and the anxiety that he couldn't get to her any faster was slowly eating away at every last cell of his body. The knot in his stomach had morphed into a tangle of nerves that stretched from the soles of his feet to the top of his skull. His breath felt like fire in his chest that only the news that she was finally stable could put out.

"What's our ETA, Lieutenant?" Kaidan's question was delivered in a serious but trembling voice. Liara rested her hand on his forearm to calm him.

Joker looked at the console, then darted around, looking at the various scrolling screens and displays about him. "About 30 minutes out from the Citadel, a little longer to Earth."

"She's in a field hospital in New York. I'll send you the coordinates as soon as they are available to me." Through his stress, Kaidan was taking on his role as the captain of the ship once again. "If you can cut that time down at all, it would work wonders, Joker."

Joker nodded. "I'll do whatever I can," he murmured, something else obviously tugging at his attention. "It's only hard without…"

The three members of the crew were all suddenly and solemnly aware of the empty chair where EDI usually sat. Liara's neck craned to bow her head.

"We are not a crew who bank on the odds, Jeff," she reassured him quietly, walking to stand behind him. "Remember that."

"I'm trying," he nodded. "I am."

"We should probably tell the rest of the crew the news." Kaidan took his place at the speaker that fed into the rest of the ship's system. Liara nodded in agreement, folding her arms as she stared out at the distant planet that could just barely be seen, glowing with the light of fires and a small hope that Commander Shepard had made it through the war.


	4. Chapter 4

She woke to the sensation of being tugged in several different directions. The ringing in her ears grew to an unbearable quality of sound; she tried to cringe but found her body to be unresponsive. The sound of panicked commands found its way past the chaos and into her head. A man's voice called for stabilization. Somebody yanked harshly on her knee and an intense rush of pain followed. Her back arched on reflex as a strained yelp ripped from her swollen throat. Two hands grabbed either side of her head.

"She's conscious!" a woman's voice called. The hum of the small space escalated. "Increase the dosage, the pain is too much…"

Shepard tried to open her eyes. The light of the room was sharp and white, much too bright for her. Her head was throbbing; it was some combination of the pain and the blood loss and the confusion of what she'd just accomplished. She felt as if she was still under the rubble of the Citadel, the pressure and dark of the place taking her under with all the pain, _destroy destroy destroy _echoing in the back of her skull. When had they taken her out of there? Had it happened at all? Her leg throbbed.

"We need to stop the bleeding! Where's the medigel?"

"Medigel isn't going to help us here!"

"It's worth trying, isn't it? Apply more pressure, stop the goddamn bleeding?"

"How far out are we from the hospital?"

"Ten minutes!" the new voice was further away.

"Shit."

She felt herself slipping in and out of varying degrees of awareness. She could hear the voices of the people around her, but she didn't dare open her eyes to see them. The lights were too bright, the pain too great, the disorientation too overwhelming. A hand pressed to her shoulder and she tried to cry out again, but her mouth felt as if it were full of cotton, dry and swollen and silent.

"Stay with us Commander. It's going to be alright."

Her mouth opened to speak, but one of the hands steadying her head increased its pressure. Thoughts started to fill her head, almost moving backwards. She thought of Kaidan, of the Normandy, of watching them evacuate and telling them to go. Just like under the rubble, she found Kaidan's name somewhere just beyond the reach of her tongue. She longed to say his name, to hang onto any tangible piece of him that could keep her breathing. She remembered the beam, the innards of the Citadel, the bullet in Anderson's gut that had caused him to bleed to death by her side. _I'm proud of you. _The words bounced around in her head and crashed against her skull, sending another wave of physical pain crashing over her body.

"Anderson," she croaked out, trying desperately to open her eyes. "Anderson…"

"Where is that drip? Why haven't you put her under yet?"

"The risks are—"

"Does it matter what the risks are? She's nearly dead anyway!"

A voice close to her ears made an attempt at soothing her. "Don't speak, Commander, just hang tight. We'll be at the hospital in a few minutes, just a few more minutes…"

"Anderson," she moaned. The lining of her throat screamed in protest to the vocalization, but she couldn't stop herself. The pain in her body was actually beginning to register in its true form, not just the half-sensations from her clouded consciousness. The wound in her leg was screaming, same with her shoulder and her abdomen. Her throat was nearly swollen shut, making it harder for her singed lungs to breathe, on top of the ash and debris that filled them to the brim. The unbearable pounding in her skull only made it harder to discern what was happening; her mind felt like a jumbled mess of pain and faces of the people she left behind.

She went to London expecting death. She walked to the beam expecting death. She destroyed the Reapers, and in return she expected death. But here she was, every inch of her body screaming for relief, but alive.

Just beyond Anderson's name was Kaidan's, lingering somewhere between her belly and her tongue. Her mind clung to any piece of him that could make its way past the agony and into the forefront of her mind. She dwelled in the small amount of stubble that lined his sharp jaw, the whiskey-colored quality of his eyes, the way the muscles of his forearm rippled under his skin when he wrapped his arms around her. She tried to replace searing pain with kisses, wounds with words, and moans of suffering with the rumble of laughter she felt when she had her ear pressed to his throat. It did nothing to ease the pain, but it removed her from the bright light and the yelling voices and the images in Anderson that seared into the insides of her eyelids with perfect clarity.

"Administering now…"

"Hang in there, Commander."

She felt a mask sliding onto her nose and mouth. "Just try to breathe."

Darkness started to creep into her head from all directions. She felt it crawling up her shoulders, wrapping itself around her ankles and creeping up to her thighs. Her face felt heavy. It was like the dark of unconsciousness she'd experienced in the ruins of the Citadel, except it was a new kind of darkness. It wasn't warm and sticky; it felt cold and metallic, a blackness that gripped her tightly and forced her into submission. The pain started to fade, only echoes of its former degree registering in her body. In the dark she found nothing. The only things left were shambles of the memories that had flashed like lightning in response to her injuries. She was aware that she was losing consciousness once again, and welcomed the relief. Lingering just before her sleep was the hum of the _Normandy_, the smell of Kaidan's clothes, and the shaking aftermath of adrenaline. She slipped into the cold nothingness, letting go of the grip she had on her senses, and succumbed to unconsciousness once again.

. . .

Admiral Hackett walked through the swinging doors of the hospital with more purpose than he'd been able to exert since the war had started. Somebody called "Admiral!" from a nearby doorway, but he kept walking.

"Shepard," he said to the doctor that had called him, who was puffing to keep up with the older man. "Where is she? What's her status?"

"She's in surgery, sir, but I- there's a problem."

"What? What's the issue?" The stress in his voice was enough to make the doctor's blood pressure rise. Hackett had a strange way of being stoic and composed while simultaneously trying not to have a heart attack.

The doctor led the admiral to a stairwell, where they started their climb through the damaged building to the floor where the commander was. "We only have limited knowledge of cybernetics, and the stuff they used when they…. rebuilt her, it's stuff we've never even seen before."

Hackett didn't hesitate, rounding the landing to yet another flight of stairs smoothly. "Get a hold of Miranda Lawson, get her here as fast as you can. Use my name if there's a problem."

"But who's…?"

"The woman who essentially rebuilt Shepard from a few bits and pieces and a pile of papers. Also, the Normandy will be here soon. You get Karen Chakwas the second she's in here to tell you anything and everything that could save Shepard's life." They reached the eighth floor and left the stairwell behind for sterile white walls. "Here, I'll try to raise Lawson. Trust me, you're going to need all the help you can get on this one."

"Sir, we're doing the best we can, but Shepard's body is—"

"One thing you'll notice, when looking through the commander's records," Hackett finally stopped and turned to the smaller man, eyes cold and sharp as steel, "is that she doesn't take too kindly to death."


	5. Chapter 5

The time after the _Normandy _docked in New York was a rushed blur of anxiety and white hallways. Liara, Garrus, and Kaidan were briefed upon entering the doors of the hospital by Admiral Hackett. Survivors and wounded soldiers filled every space of the hospital. The staff had all hands on deck, trying to treat as many as they could. The Reapers had fallen, sure, but the damage that they'd left was tremendous. The moans and cries of the afflicted echoed through the halls as they escaped the first floor and, with the elevators still out of service, headed to the stairwell.

What he told them was simple. Shepard had accomplished what they had set out to do. The Crucible did its job. It was unclear as to how it happened, but she made it happen. But, the Crucible had also done huge amounts of damage to the Citadel. They'd found her under the rubble, barely breathing, and brought her to the hospital on Earth for care. She was in critical condition. They weren't sure if it was even possible for her to make it through surgery. She'd been in surgery for an hour and a half, and Miranda Lawson had just arrived to aid the second half of the problem: her cybernetics were offline. Whatever the Crucible had done to the Reapers, it had frazzled the workings of anything synthetic.

By the time they'd reached the eighth floor, they were all a little out of breath and trying to decide if they felt better or worse about the odds than before. Hackett led them to a stiff waiting room, full of chairs and a few outdated datapads and a screen that had no signal. Garrus sat down immediately and put his elbows on his knees, exhaling for what was probably the first time since they'd set out for the final push in London.

With an explanation that nobody really had the heart to listen to, Hackett set out to go catch a shuttle that was waiting for him on the roof. There was a whole galaxy of destruction to attend to, and it was his job to see it all through. They nodded a quiet goodbye to him before he wished them all the best. "Keep me posted," he said, and they assured him that they would. The door to the stairwell swung shut behind him, leaving them alone to dangle in the hours of waiting that were undoubtedly ahead of them.

. . .

The time in the waiting room was unbearable. There was nothing to do, nothing to say, nothing that could bring them any sort of relief from the endless pressure that filled any free space left between them. Kaidan paced, his footsteps haunting the nearly empty halls of the operating ward. Any patients there were either being wheeled to the O.R., or were in the rooms themselves. The silence was a screeching reminder of where they were, and the burden that was corroding away at the three crew members.

It had been nearly two hours waiting. "Kaidan, you should really try to sit down and relax…" Liara suggested from her seat next to Garrus.

He opened his mouth to reply but was silenced by the swinging of the double doors of Shepard's operating room. She'd been in there for what would soon be four hours, without a word from anybody inside. Miranda emerged in hospital scrubs, her hair tied and covered by a cap, a mask hanging around her neck. She looked like she'd ran a marathon, then jumped into emergency surgery. In her own way, she really had.

Garrus rose from his seat first, crossing the room before Kaidan even realized what was happening. "Miranda," he said, his voice taking on a new tone of relief. "So good to see a familiar face."

"I feel the same way, Garrus." She was quiet, wiping her hands on the front of her clothes. "I wish I had more news for you than we're still trying to work."

"How does it look?" Kaidan piped in. His voice wavered in his throat.

"Well, I have seen her worse…" Miranda took a moment to let out a long breath. "But that was when she was dead, so I can't exactly say…"

Kaidan wrung his hands, trying to keep himself composed. Outwardly he'd done a good job of regulating himself, arranging his expression into a cold face of bravery. Still, it was difficult to be so brave internally as well when the commander was lying on a table, fighting for her life. The woman he'd once regarded as a the Cerberus agent who, he reluctantly admitted, had quite literally brought Shepard back from the dead, was now likely the only chance the commander had at survival.

"What about her cybernetics?" Liara asked, voice grave with worry. Miranda shook her head. "Surely there must be _something _that can be done?"

"I have a few more solutions to try, just not the resources to try them yet. They're being lifted here as we speak, due to arrive in a few minutes. We're lucky the admiral is sparing no expense or resource when it comes to Shepard."

Garrus gave a half-chuckle. "Well, she _did _just save the galaxy and all."

"That she did." Miranda shook her head with a small smile. "I think we knew she would."

A comfortable silence came over them, the first one that had graced them since the three had first taken up residence in the waiting room. A shrill beeping interrupted them, coming from Miranda's omnitool. She glanced at the alarm and then met the three pairs of anxious eyes before her. "That's the call for the supplies, so I should be on my way to meet them on the roof. I'll keep you all updated with any news. Hang in there… try to rest a bit. It's going to be a long while before there's anything new to tell."

"Thank you, Miranda," Liara said. Garrus nodded to her, as did Kaidan, and she went off up the stairs.

Kaidan settled into a chair, tension starting to slowly melt away from his muscles. His bones groaned with the weight of the world and the worry of losing Shepard again starting to roll off his shoulders. Liara mentioned something about coffee, but he decided against it, as sleep seemed to suddenly be calling to him. He settled against the wall and closed his eyes. The anxiety of the passing hours still pressed on him in every spare space in his body, between every cell, in every molecule of every inch of him, but still he found himself finally resting. The smallest bit of reprieve was priceless in the situation they'd been thrust into.

In the safety behind his eyelids, he allowed himself to think about her. He thought about her scent on her clothes, gun oil and sweat and vanilla raspberry perfume. He dwelled in the taste of her mouth, the cinnamon chewing gum, coffee, and something dull and sweet that he could never put a finger on. The memory he color of her eyes, the vivid blues with little flecks of steel that he could only see when he had his forehead pressed to hers, nearly took his breath away. Even in all the chaos, she was a safe place. His safe place.

He'd promised to be her strength, her soft place to land, but predictably enough, everything turned the other way around. He'd already lost her once; he couldn't bear to think of what would become of him if he lost her again. He'd fallen in love with every inch of her the same way he had the first time, back when they were worried about the Geth and "Reaper" wasn't even in their vocabulary. There was no slow falling in love, no questioning if she was the one for him, no wondering if she felt the same way. She stormed into his life and took all of him by force. There was no other soul that he could ever belong to in the way that he belonged to her. He would never want anyone else. After having a woman like Shepard, how could he?

Had the situation been any lighter, he would have smiled. But it was too early for smiling.

The silence pressed hard to the insides of his ears, only interrupted by the humming of machines, distant voices of doctors and patients in their agony, or the beeping of electronics around the halls of the ward. The blend of sounds carried him gently into a half-sleep that didn't rest him, but took the worries from his mind a saved them for later. Shepard had defeated the Reapers, and it was time to breathe out. He let his worries go and hung onto only the small memories of her that he so desperately didn't want to fade away.


	6. Chapter 6

The days that followed in the hospital were long and full of waiting. Kaidan never left the waiting spaces that were allowed to the crew. Liara spent most of her time on her omnitool, organizing who-knows-what with all the information she had and favors to call in. The rest of her time was spent trying to get Kaidan to eat something or keeping the rest of the crew updated on what was happening on the Shepard-front.

James, Cortez, and Garrus had taken to helping with digging through the damaged streets of New York for survivors and helping with whatever rebuilding they could. Most of it ended up being temporary shelters for those who had lost their homes. New York hadn't seen nearly as much damage as London or Thessia had, but the Reapers had brought a storm with them, and relief was needed for the thousands of people who had been torn from their homes and families.

Tali, Traynor, and a few others from the _Normandy _were helping out at the hospital with organization. Chakwas had dove headfirst into taking care of afflicted patients the second she'd finished with the doctors on Shepard's operation. Miranda and Joker had retreated to the ship with EDI's body, working to retrieve whatever programming or data or technology or _who knows what_ that was lost when the Crucible had fired and destroyed the Reapers.

The war was over, but there was still work to be done for everyone. Years' worth of work.

Shepard had been moved to the intensive care unit after her surgery. Kaidan spent his hours there, first in the waiting area because visitors weren't permitted, but once they had her stabilized they allowed him in per Admiral Hackett's orders. He sat by her bedside, not leaving her for more than a half an hour here or there. He either slept or sat there holding her bandaged hand gingerly in his. They had her sedated medically because of the time it was going to take to heal the burns and other afflictions that would be otherwise unbearable.

On his fifth day by her side, Liara stood in the doorway of Shepard's room. "Kaidan?" she interrupted quietly, as Kaidan was hunched over the side of her bed with her hand between both of his. He sat up and rubbed the side of his unshaven face with one hand. "I brought you some clothes," she offered, holding up a bag. She produced a tray of coffee cups from her other hand that was behind the wall of the doorframe. He took one and thanked her quietly. "Can I get you something to eat? Let's go get something to eat."

"No," he said quickly. "Not hungry."

"I could bring it up here, if you like…"

He considered her offer, looking at Shepard, who slept silently to the sounds of beeping monitors and churning machinery. Her cybernetics hummed with a barely-audible sound just beneath her skin. They weren't perfect yet, but Miranda had done the impossible once more and fashioned some technology to keep Shepard alive and functional. Kaidan didn't want to leave her side for one more second than he needed to.

"Sure, Liara. That'd be great," he nodded towards the asari tiredly, a small bit of his usual self shining through for a moment. He sat back in his chair, still looking tired, still holding onto Shepard's hand.

"Okay. Oh, and Jeff is stopping in soon. He said they're making good progress on EDI, he thinks. There was some amount of data recovered within the Normandy's systems, and it might be enough to make a difference…" She put the bag down at the end of the bed and put a hand on the footboard, glancing at the datapad that was hooked there.

"That's good," Kaidan said, sounding entirely flat.

Liara frowned. "We'll take good news as we get it, Kaidan. Rebuilding is—"

"I don't know why they're wasting their time rebuilding," Kaidan interrupted harshly. Liara straightened her spine, staring at him from across the small room. "We don't owe the universe jack shit anymore. We did our job, and this is what we get for it?"

"Kaidan." She folded her arms, trying not to sound shocked. "The whole galaxy has work to do, and a lot of it, at that. Everyone has to do their part to—"

"We did our part. Shepard did her part, _more _than her part…" He was staring at her again, instead of looking at Liara. "We're done. The war's over."

"Life goes on."

"That's not a given right now," he murmured.

Liara pursed her lips, knowing it was a lost cause to try to reason with the frazzled major at a time of so much tribulation. "I'll be back with some food in a little while, I'll see what I can find. Keep an eye out for Jeff?"

Kaidan stayed silent. Without a moment's delay, she turned and left him alone once more. He only had good intentions, staying by Shepard through everything, but the lack of sleep and inhuman amounts of stress he'd endured not only since arriving in New York, but also since the beginning of the war, were starting to rear their ugly head. He found himself snapping at anyone who said anything that wasn't good news. And aside from Shepard still being alive and the Reapers being gone for good, there wasn't much good news to be found in the ruins scattered around the galaxy. Casualties were through the roof, cities were destroyed, people misplaced, resources running low. As a major, as someone who cared deeply for the wellbeing of the people of Earth and beyond, he should have been helping with relief efforts. But he found that the only thing he could bring himself to care about was the unconscious woman lying in her hospital bed by his side.

Some amount of time had passed before Joker limped into the room, looking like he hadn't slept in a few days. His beard was overgrown and his eyes were ringed by circles darker than every those of Kaidan's tired face. Without a word, he stood at the foot of Shepard's bed and stared at her for one of the longer moments Kaidan had ever felt in his life.

"Well shit," Joker spoke up finally. "At least she's not dead this time."

Kaidan nearly cracked a smile. Even in the darkest of times, Jeff's humor seemed to be indomitable.

"You look terrible, Alenko. Forgive the insubordination."

He shook his head. "Same to you."

"Yeah, well. Trying to reassemble your girlfriend from a series of zeros and ones will do that to you." He limped over to the side of the bed opposite Kaidan and sat in the smaller chair there. "Miranda says there's a chance though. She's gonna try to find the guys that built her in the beginning but they were Cerberus, so…"

Kaidan shifted in his seat, taking a sip of his coffee. "Liara left you a cup," he nodded to the paper cup on the table beside him.

"I don't know how she does it," he said, punctuating the sentence with a long sip. "Liara, I mean. She's the Shadow Broker, and she's keeping tabs on all of us, keeping us updated and all…"

"She does a lot."

"You're quiet." Joker looked at him, then to Shepard.

Kaidan kept his eyes on her, studying the lines of her face, examining the scar behind her ear where they'd shaved away some of her dark hair to access whatever they had beyond her flesh to keep her alive. Joker was trying to keep the situation light, but he couldn't really appreciate the gesture. Every spare amount of energy in his body was put into worrying about Shepard, wondering if she'd be alright in the end.

"There's not a lot I have to say." Kaidan seemed more thoughtful than anything else. Silence fell between the two of them, the room filling once more with the tune of churning monitors and beeping and the sounds of other distant patients moaning in their rooms. Kaidan sucked in a long breath, then puffed it out. "I could really go for a smoke right now."

Joker arched a brow. "You smoke?"

"No." He shook his head with something similar to a laugh. "I picked it up after Shepard, ah…. died. But I quit after a year or so. Only slowed me down." He picked up one of the tubes connected to the crook of her arm and rolled it gently between his fingers. "Helped with the stress, though. The headaches."

It was Jeff's turn to have nothing to say. Kaidan still refused to turn his eyes from Shepard. "What was she like, then?"

"Huh?"

"When she… came back. When I told her I wouldn't go back if she was going to side with Cerberus."

"She wasn't _siding _with Ceberus, she was…" He glanced up at Kaidan, who was finally looking at him with a look that told him to get back on track. "Right. Well, she was pretty torn up. But she was herself, if that's what you mean. I sat there every day and waited for them to wake her up, not really knowing if she'd be… her, y'know? But she came walking through that door, and I just," he paused, putting a hand on one of her legs. "I knew she was the Shepard I'd always known. And she was there and it wasn't _my fault _that she was dead anymore."

Kaidan was quiet for a long moment. He leaned back in his seat and stared at the white tiles of the ceiling. "What about Horizon?"

Joker released a harsh chuckle, one that had been pent up for quite a while, no doubt. "Well, she was furious with you for a few hours, then I found her in her cabin a few hours later shitfaced trying to explain to me why you wouldn't come back, and how _wrong _you were."

"And you agreed, no doubt."

"Well, you _were,_Alenko." Jeff took another sip of his coffee. "She did great things while you were elsewhere. And all the while she was still so hung up on you. I never really figured out why. But I guess I know now."

Kaidan swallowed audibly. "It was circumstantial. I would have dropped everything for her if it hadn't been Cerberus. She knows that."

"And you were hung up on her?"

"She probably told you about that email I sent," he half-chuckled. "I was very upset with what I'd said. And very drunk."

"Rumor has it that you were very drunk most of the time, back then."

"Yeah, well. I don't talk about it much." He leaned forward and took his coffee into his hands again, thinking. "It's hard. Watching the woman you love who's been dead for two years suddenly be resurrected. Hoping this time it won't be that long."

"Well, she's not clinically brain dead this time. Look on the bright side!"

Kaidan shook his head, looking at the pilot who was hunched over. Jeff popped his hat off of his head ran a hand through his hair. Kaidan could've sworn a small smile peeked from behind his overgrown facial hair. "You have a pretty strange idea of the bright side, Lieutenant."

He laughed, the sound refreshing the clammy stiffness of the room. Kaidan felt lighter. "Well, they don't call me Joker for nothing."


	7. Chapter 7

His voice teased her ears. The sound was muffled at first, her consciousness pulling in and out, ebbing and flowing like waves wearing away at the shore. The darkness had her boxed in, safe but not sound, protected but still not stable. She felt heat everywhere she could still feel. Her legs tingled. She'd been reduced to a sleep, to a dreamlike state inside as she began to come back to consciousness.

His voice was what woke her up.

"Shepard?" She was fighting the sleepiness of her mind to give him an answer. She knew that voice. She knew it meant safety. Home. "Shepard, can you… are you…?"

It was like swimming upwards from the bottom of the ocean. The tingling wrapped and tugged on her legs, pulling her under, drowning her as she fought for air. Ringing and beeping came in muffled bursts to her ears. Was this Hell? Was this what she'd fought so hard for? Her lungs screamed for air that they already had. Heat shot through her chest where pain should have been. Heat everywhere, every inch of her skin. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. Tubes blocked her throat. Her lips parted, searching for sound, reaching for another breath.

"Shepard?"

Her eyes opened, finally allowing some light to bring clarity to her surroundings. Her vision was blurred; she could barely make out the shapes around her. The darkness of the room consumed most of what she could manage to make out. A person next to her, a tower of hard shapes and blinking colors on the opposite side. She came to the surface of her consciousness and reached the wall of pain that waited just beyond the thin veil of the drip of painkillers to her side. Every inch of her skin, bandaged or not, begged for relief from the burning or from the heat of her body itself.

Her mouth tried to tangle itself into the shape of his name, but came up silent. A small wheeze escaped her throat. She felt him scrambling for her hand, which only hurt her more, but she winced instead.

"Shepard, it's okay, I'm here," Kaidan said, urgent as ever. She heard him calling for the nurse. "Shepard? It's going to be alright. We're okay. We're okay."

_We're okay. _The thought echoed in her head and bounced around in the darkness of her skull. She opened her eyes once again, using all the strength left in her body to try to turn towards him. He calmed her with words she couldn't understand; the pain began to creep in and the sensations made her deaf to any calming words. Her breath came in short gasps, feeling like the air reaching her lungs was also suffocating her faster than it was helping. Agony washed in, wave after wave, overwhelming any defense she had left against it.

A dull moan rose from her throat, growing louder as Kaidan's grip loosened and left her hand. She heard him saying something, but the lights grew brighter and he was pulled out to sea. The heat consumed her, like flame in its purest form. Shifting shapes of new people crowded over her, murmuring, humming, attending to the heat. Buttons chirping, machines churning, sounds clicking and clinking and seeping into her mind. With an overwhelming release, the heat began to fade and clarity was in sight.

One by one, the figures became nurses and it began to register that they were caring for her. Her eyes darted from face to face, putting the pieces together. They were speaking in soothing but serious tones, telling her not to speak, not to move, to save her energy for getting better. She hadn't realized that she was already trying to sit up. She slumped back against the mattress and allowed them to finish their work on her. The nurse closest to her side administered an opaque fluid through a syringe into a small machine; its effects were felt almost instantly. The stress in her muscles deflated, her lungs relaxing, her heart slowing to a normal rate. The machines at her side were quieter. The nurse rested her hand on Shepard's forehead.

"You're okay, Commander. We're going to make sure of it." Shepard managed to focus her eyes on the woman above her, an asari whose skin was a soothing indigo. "Get some rest."

The nurses took their leave, and blackness followed almost immediately.

. . .

The second time she woke, there was immediate clarity, as if she'd merely woken up from a night's sleep. She turned her head to see him asleep in the chair by her side. She moaned, the aches and pains of her body becoming too much for her to bear in her consciousness. Her blurry eyes watched as he woke with a start, looking to her and seeing her awake.

"Shepard," he whispered, leaning towards her. His movements were hesitant, small, almost. Like he was afraid she'd poof to ashes if he moved too harshly.

The clouded darkness nearly lifted from her, she opened her mouth to speak. "Kaidan—" Her mouth formed the name, but hardly any sound came from her barren throat. The weakened muscles around her mouth tried to offer him a smile, but found themselves overwhelmed with the agony that seemed to overrun her entire body.

He leaned close to her side and took her hand gingerly between both of his. She watched, eyes full of sorrow and relief, as he struggled for words. "Shepard," he murmured. "Oh, Shepard…" He moved over her, despite his hesitations, and pressed the gentlest kiss he could manage to the center of her forehead. "Don't say anything, it's okay… it's okay, everything's okay now. Just rest."

She swallowed, her throat still blocked by the tubes. "Kaidan," she managed to croak, trying her hardest to squeeze his hand back. "We…"

"We made it. We're here, Shepard, it's… it's over." His voice was thick with tears. He kissed her forehead once more and lingered there, his breath drifting over the skin that wasn't covered in bandages. "Over. Sounds good to say, doesn't it?" He laughed through his tears, a hand barely smoothing over her hair. "I can't believe you're here."

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, trying to remember how to speak. Her hand found the strength to give his fingers a small squeeze. "I love you," she whispered. He nodded, still lingering over her, and kissed the tip of her nose.

"I love you so much. Until the end of time. Always, Shepard." He still sounded like he was about to cry. She wanted so much to tell him not to, to smile, to laugh with his ridiculous chuckle that she'd grown so fond of. She longed for his smile, for his kisses, for the goosebumps and the tingling that lingered in the pit of his stomach long after he stopped touching her. All of her senses were overwhelmed with pain and ache and grief. All she wanted was peace.

Kaidan leaned back and looked at her, meeting her eyes. His hasty hands pushed the tears from his exhausted eyes. His mouth twisted into a crooked smile, contorted by the cocktail of emotions that had ambushed him in his sleep, happiness and relief, sorrow and worry, all pushing and pulling at his insides and leaving him in the limbo between all of them. All he could do was look at her. She watched his eyes study her face, then rake down her healing body, the blankets and bandages and burnt and bloodied skin. She was in so much pain, but pain couldn't take her from him. Not now, not ever again.

Her mouth opened once more, without a plan. She felt so compelled to tell him everything she felt, her relief, her pride in him. She wanted so badly to ask about the crew, the ship, Earth, the galaxy. A heated flash of guilt crashed through her bones. EDI. The Geth.

Kaidan had obviously seen her expression change with the realization that had crossed her mind. He dragged a comforting hand over her forearm, soothing her back to her more peaceful state, despite her pain. He'd always had a way of calming her, and it was only magnified when she was in such a vulnerable state. He shushed her, tracing circles on her skin. "Don't. Just rest now. There'll be time to talk later. All the time in the whole world, Shepard."

She persisted in opening her mouth once more, but closed it as he traced a wide circle over the portion of her arm that wasn't covered in gauze. There were a thousand things she wanted, she needed to say to him, but the tubes and the pain and the guilt stopped her.

"I can't believe you're here." He was speaking his mind freely to her, a rare occurrence from Kaidan. "You're alive and… I just thought…"

She used all her strength to grab his forearm mid-circle and hold him tightly. Her gaze locked with his, speaking every word she wanted to with perfect clarity without a single syllable passing her lips.

"I thought I'd never see you again. I did, Shepard, I thought I'd never touch you again." She could hear his voice thickening once again. "I couldn't lose you again." She held onto him tighter, urging him that everything would be okay now with her eyes. The small smile that curved his lips signaled that he got the message.

"I promised," she croaked, her fingers still tight against his skin.

He craned his neck and kissed the back of her aching hand. "I know, I…" another kiss, "I know."


	8. Chapter 8

"Ay, Lola!" Shepard heard James' call before he even made it to the room. She sat up too quickly, bringing a groan from her mouth instead of a response to the lieutenant. Assuring Kaidan she was fine, she reached up gingerly to smooth a hand over her messy hair and slumped back against the pillows. James appeared in the doorway, followed closely by Garrus. "Guess who's here!"

The smile that touched her mouth was instant. "Dumb and dumber?"

"Hey, I haven't lost _that_ many brain cells by association quite yet," Garrus teased, pushing past the lieutenant. He reached her bedside and leaned down to peck her forehead. "How are you feeling, Shepard?" His voice took on a surprising tenderness when he was close to her.

She moved to clutch her side, adjusting herself again. "Just a few scrapes and bruises, you know. The usual."

James shook his head, coming to greet her from the foot of the bed. "Well would you look at that! Two legs, two arms? I'd say you're in great shape, Commander."

She laughed, taking care not to be too hasty with her movements, but still enjoying the lighter side of visitors. Consciousness was becoming a regular occurrence, finally, after a few days of struggling between darkness and sleep, and actually being awake and able to talk. They'd removed the tube from her stomach that morning. She wasn't going anywhere soon, but the war had ended twelve days ago, and she'd been at least partially awake for six of them. The resilience she possessed was nothing short of inhuman, but then again a large portion of her body wasn't exactly human anyway. With the rate she'd been recovering at, her team of doctors projected she'd be out of the hospital in a few weeks. The words were music to her (and Kaidan's) ears. It was time to go home and recover and sleep and feast like the victors that they were. The war was over.

The two members of the Normandy's crew greeted Kaidan with quiet respects. He still looked as if he hadn't been sleeping; rings under his eyes, his hair a little out of place. He'd taken the time to shower and shave and was eating regularly again since Shepard had woken up, but he was still looking stressed as ever. The crew understood. Even though they walked on eggshells around him, they had the respect and support that being under Shepard's command had drilled into them. The war was over and the ship was docked, but they were still their own little dysfunctional military family at the end of the day.

"Not going to lie to you, Shepard, you gave us all a scare back in London," Garrus said, taking a seat opposite Kaidan. "Telling us to get out of there and all. I had to tell Joker to get going. He looked like a lost puppy, to tell you the truth."

She couldn't help but laugh again, leaning against her pillow to look over at him. "If I remember correctly, Joker is always the last to get his ass out of anywhere."

It was Garrus' turn to chuckle. "Well, the moral of the story is, _never _make me make that call again. Are we clear?"

"Crystal. I don't think we're going to have to."

She glanced back to Kaidan, who silently took her hand into his. He wore the smallest smile on his lips.

"No more adventures on the ol' Normandy?" James said, half-mocking disappointment. "No more kickin' Reaper ass, takin' Reaper names?"

"The Reapers are dead now, in case you haven't noticed, James." Garrus mocked him, as if he were talking to a child. James took the time to knock Garrus on the back of his head.

"There's always ass to be kicked, _pendejo, _regardless of the species!"

Shepard shook her head, stifling her laughter. Nothing had really changed since the war's end, except maybe the decrease in stress. Which probably only fueled the teasing. "Something tells me we've all earned a break."

"Damn right, Shepard." Garrus nodded, a mischievous glint shining through his visor. "When you're out of here, drinks are on me. Although, they cost a little bit more here than they do, y'know, upstairs."

She nodded, remembering their conversation about meeting at the bar in "Turian Heaven" if things went south in London. "You know, I'm sort of glad that we're gonna have to spend the extra credits."

"I am too, Shepard."

. . .

Moonlight filtered through the dim glass window of the hospital room, giving the walls and machinery around them a milky glow that seemed to induce sleepiness. Kaidan slept quietly in his recliner, clutching the blanket wrapped around his legs and chest and making small sounds that Shepard had grown accustomed to in their time together. She, however, found herself sleepless. With the condition her head was in, there wasn't much she could do besides sit and pass the hours quietly recovering. At night, the minutes felt like hours, and the hours felt like lifetimes. Silhouettes of destroyed skyscrapers haunted the night sky, haunted her thoughts of the war and beyond.

New York. She'd grown up on the streets there. Tenth Street, to be exact. She squinted up at the moon. It was hard to think it was the same hunk of rock she'd been looking up at twenty years ago, not far from where she lay in that moment. Everything had changed since then, since the moment the leader of the Tenth Street Reds had stopped her from running off in an alley and back into living on the streets.

She almost smiled at the memory, finding it distant and clouded by loss and anger. Knox Ryker, the man she owed her life to. The man who had forced her to enlist before she wound up chained to their gang for life, just as their position in the city started to go sour.

She could remember the first time she'd met him with cloudy clarity.

"_Hey," the tall man stood at the end of the alley that she'd darted into to avoid the police cruiser that drifted by moments later. "Hey, kid—"_

_She gave him one wide eyed look at moved to sprint back out onto the street, clutching one of the straps of her backpack. She'd seen his face before in her first days of living on the streets, always looking at her like he knew exactly what she was doing. Her first instinct was to mark him as dangerous. He had enough tattoos on his arms to make her ten-year-old mind that he was not to be trusted. _

"_Hey kid! Wait a second! Do you really want to be out on the streets in this storm?" The man didn't move from his spot, but had stood up from leaning against the wall. She stopped at the end of the wall, staring at the line between the alley and the sidewalk. Her hands pushed away the rain that dripped over her face and stuck dark clumps of hair to the sides of her face. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I've seen you around, y'know. Got parents?" _

"_No," she called coldly, balling her hands into small fists. "What's it matter to you?" _

"_I don't either," he yelled over the roar of rolling thunder. "Lost 'em when I was little. Living on your own when you're a kid isn't a good idea around here. I can help you." _

"_I don't need your help!" she yelled back, but she turned to look at him. Her fists still shook with the force of clamping them down on themselves. _

"_I'm not saying you do," he took a step forward, causing her to take two backwards. He put his hands up in immediate retreat. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I promise." _

"_Do you have a gun?" _

_He shook his head, his palms still open in front of his chest. "Not for you, kid. Are you gonna let me help you or not?" _

_She looked at the man standing before her, sleeves of his worn jacket rolled up his arms, black hair stuck to his forehead. He was much younger than she'd originally thought. The stubble that lined his jaw and the ink that crawled from his collar to his neck intimidated her, but his eyes seemed uncharacteristically kind. He let his hands fall to his sides, giving her time for her answer. _

_She uncurled her fists, though her hands still trembled. Without a word, she walked to him. "What's your name, kid?" _

_Her lips pursed as they walked towards the end of the alleyway. The first thing she knew was to not tell a soul her name. _

"_It's alright, y'know. I'm not a cop…" They turned onto the sidewalk. He looked over his shoulder on instinct, causing her to do the same. "My name's Ryker. Well, that's what people call me. You can call me Knox if you want." _

"_I'm Jane," she lied, using her middle name. It was generic enough to use, she supposed._

"_Bullshit, kid. I can hear it in your voice." _

_Her knees shook at the accusation, but she heard the smile in his voice. After a long pause and a crack of lightning, she finally said, "Mallory." _

_They walked the rest of the way to Tenth Street in silence, letting the thunderstorm fill the space between them. _

It'd turned out that her first impression of him had been correct. They'd met when he was twenty-two, and she was ten. A fresh runaway from her foster home, just months after losing both of her parents. She'd spent ten days on the streets of New York City before the Reds took her in. She kept her childhood to herself for the most part, sharing little to nothing with her crew, not even Kaidan. The only ones who truly knew the details were Hackett and Anderson. Anderson knew the most, and he'd taken that to his grave with him.

She inhaled sharply, pushing the thought from her mind. The monitors beside her blipped with the sudden change in pace in her vitals, then settled. She burrowed deeper into her nest of pillows and tried to take herself back to Tenth Street, but was distracted by Kaidan rustling at her side.

He sat up suddenly, a strangled gasp tearing through the calm of the room. His eyes darted wide to meet hers. Relief washed over him as he caught himself, leaning forward to touch her arm, as if he was afraid she'd disappear at a moment's notice.

"Hey," she whispered, gathering the strength to hold his hand in hers. "I'm here. You alright?"

"Yeah… yeah. Just a dream." He seemed breathless. The skin of his hand felt clammy to her unbandaged fingers.

She shook her head. "Seemed more like a nightmare to me."

"Yeah, well. Nothing to worry about."

She puffed out a long breath. "Kaidan."

"Go back to sleep." He gave her hand a squeeze that was supposed to be reassuring.

"I wasn't sleeping," she deadpanned. "And I'm not going anywhere, you know that, right? Things are… we're safe here, now."

He furrowed his brow. "I know. I… yeah. I know."

Kaidan had been so exhausted by their time in the hospital that he spent much of it quiet with her hand in his. Their sleep schedules were nearly opposite each other as a result of her medication and his exhaustion, so they'd spoken very little one-on-one. As she considered it, she realized that this was their first moment really speaking since she'd first regained consciousness.

"Come here," she commanded simply, pulling on his hand. He seemed confused for a moment, understanding only when she brought his hand to her mouth and placed a kiss on his knuckles.

He eased himself out of his chair and leaned forward, his forehead barely grazing hers. "Can I?" he asked cautiously, and she nodded. All memories of Tenth Street, all thoughts of Anderson, they all rushed away from her mind and were replaced with Kaidan. His scent, the color of his eyes, the feeling of his skin against hers again. Relief washed over her as his bottom lip barely grazed hers. "I love you so much," he whispered, his breath splashing against her skin.

"I love you too, Kaidan." A smile curved her mouth just before he took her up into a kiss. His lips against hers felt like an exhale after holding her breath for the entirely of the war. From the sounds coming from his mouth, it seemed to be about the same for him too. He moved his mouth carefully, gaining access to her as she parted her lips and let him in. At her side, the monitors started to hum and chime with her change in heartrate, bringing laughter from them both. He kissed her again and again, taking his time, running a hand gingerly over her arm.

He pulled away, allowing the machinery to start to cool down. The smile on her face lingered as she watched him sit back down. His hand remained in hers.

"I'm not going anywhere," she assured him quietly.

"I know."

"No, look at me," she demanded. "Look. I'm here. And I'm going to get better, and we're going to get out of here. And go wherever you want. And be happy. Finally. Are we clear?" Her voice was hushed but serious. Commander-ly. He knew to expect nothing less in such a moment.

"We're clear," he nodded. She smiled again, raising a hand to touch the side of his unshaven face, where just enough stubble lined his jaw to tickle the pad of her thumb. "I'm just…. so happy you're here, Shepard. I thought…"

"Well, it doesn't matter what you thought. It matters what you're thinking now." She gave him a look that asked the question of what was on his racing mind.

"I'm thinking we should go back to Vancouver when this is all over. Last I heard, the house is in good shape, if you wanted to…"

She smiled, smoothing her thumb across his cheek and relishing the fact that she still had the opportunity to do so. Walking down the ramp of the Normandy and watching him reach out for her had broken her heart; she'd thought it was the last time she'd ever see him, and she knew he'd felt the same in that moment, too.

"There's nothing else I want," she said, studying his eyes and thanking every power in the universe that she still had the chance to do so.


	9. Chapter 9

"Commander Shepard," Hackett's voice filled the small hospital room, laced with both warmth and exhaustion. "It's good to finally reach you."

"Same to you, sir." A smile touched her lips immediately. She adjusted her position in bed and raised the volume of the borrowed omni-tool. Kaidan had left it in the room while he went down to the cafeteria to see if there was any food to spare that wasn't going straight to survivors. "How are things on the Citadel?"

He cleared his throat. "Well, they're rough. The place is in pretty bad shape, as you can imagine, but we've got help from all corners of the galaxy right now."

"I don't need to imagine. It's going to be a process."

"At least now we've got time for it, right?" She heard him chuckle on the other end. She couldn't remember the last time he'd been in such good spirits. "How are we feeling?"

"Getting there. Not dead this time, so I'd imagine the recovery will take less than two years."

She could almost feel him shaking his head at her light humor. "And the cybernetics?"

"Humming and churning. It kind of tickles, sir," she smirked, hearing him laugh once again. He had enough to worry about; he didn't need to be worrying about her pain on top of everything else.

Despite her efforts, he came once again through the speaker. "You're a damn good liar, Commander. But I appreciate the jokes."

"Any news on when you'll be able to take leave?"

"Probably when I'm dead," he yawned. "But really, the place is basically rubble right now, and I've got to tell these people where to put what. The Citadel is the hub of the galaxy. We need it up and running to get the rest of space back in order."

A comfortable silence passed between them. She thought about the Citadel she knew, and the Citadel she'd seen when she'd walked to destroy the Reapers. The Citadel she'd seen when she'd slumped down next to Anderson as he'd breathed his dying breath. _I'm proud of you. _She cringed at the thought, trying to rush it from her mind before it could take her over like it did in the darkest of her nightmares.

"Speaking of the Citadel, what happened when you were up there?" A curious question. A reasonable one. She fiddled with the tubes in her arm as she thought of a way to answer him. _I'm proud of you _echoed around in her mind, distracting her from any coherent thought. She scratched her head and opened her mouth to speak, her breath quaking in her lungs.

"I… I think it's a conversation better saved for when I see you next, Admiral," she said slowly, a sense of finality in her words. He made a small noise of confirmation, followed by a hum of conversation in the background.

After a moment of him conversing with someone else, he returned to their conversation. "That would probably be best. I have to head out, being pulling in about a thousand different directions and there's a lot left to do. Keep me posted, Shepard."

"I will, sir."

"Shepard?" he interjected before she could disconnect. She waited for his response, slightly confused. He was always very curt with goodbyes. "Call me Hackett."

"Alright… Hackett," she smiled. The sound was strange, but much more personal.

"Take care of yourself. I'll be in touch. Hackett out." There was the goodbye she was so familiar with.

She disconnected, taking the omni-tool off of her arm and leaving it on Kaidan's chair by her bedside. The words "visiting hours" and "family members only" didn't really apply when you saved the entire galaxy, and rightfully so. Kaidan had been allowed access to her hospital room with only a little argument and vouching from the highest powers of Alliance space. She was grateful, both to the powers that let him stay with her, and to him for being by her side at her worst. She'd never known the same pain that she'd felt as she recovered from the final battle against the Reapers. It'd been almost three weeks since she'd arrived in the hospital, but it felt like a small eternity. The cybernetics beneath her skin hummed and churned with the impatience of technology that was working against itself. Her skin healed slowly, leaving the old scars deeper and the new ones fresh and pink and puckered. She slept during the day, waking only for doctors and visitors, and was wide awake in the dark night where she watched the dead skyline of the city that she'd roamed in her adolescence with a knife in her boot and her homemade tattoos on her shoulderblades. She wept silently as Kaidan slept, never waking him, keeping her pain and grief of both the physical and the ideological factors that came with the aftermath of the war to herself.

She just didn't want to be any more of a burden than she needed to be.

She spent hours thinking about Thane, Legion, Mordin, Ash, Anderson… EDI… all the faces that had promised her loyalty, only for her to allow them to die. Kaidan told her time and time again that their deaths were not her fault, but she refused the comfort. She wasn't sure if it was her stubbornness or the fact that their blood was really entirely on her hands, but she refused to let the blame be placed on anything besides her mission.

When Kaidan was around, she was okay. He kept her mind off of things, helped her focus on getting better. He kissed her and made her laugh and provided for whatever she needed. The crew came around too, in an effort to lighten her spirits, to check on her progress, to give her back one fraction of the loyalty she'd given to them. But still, the faces missing were the ones that haunted her the most.

A knock at the door pulled her from her spiraling thoughts. Jeff stood at the doorway, looking just about as disheveled and tired as all the other times he'd stopped in. This time, he held his hat in his hands. "Come in," she said, her brow furrowing as she sat up.

"Don't worry about it," he said as she started to comb her fingers through her hair. "We both look like shit."

"I appreciate the honestly, Lieutenant," she took a swing at a joke, but he didn't smile. Not even a twitch of the corner of his tired mouth. He moved Kaidan's omni-tool and sat down next to her, adjusting the chair so he was fully facing her. "Any news on…"

"EDI's gone," he announced flatly, sounding entirely defeated. A hot pang of sorrow struck through her immediately, flushing all of her limbs with heat. She closed her eyes in an attempt to hide the rush of emotion that touched her. "Miranda says there's nothing she can do. All of her data is completely gone. Erased, like there was nothing there in the first place. We've tried everything. Her original files at Cerberus are gone too."

"Isn't there something we can—"

"Don't you get it? She's _gone, _Commander. That's it. Dead, if you can call it that, I…" He trailed off, calming suddenly from his haste. She realized she'd been clutching the blanket over her lap, causing her damaged skin to strain and nearly tear at the force. She raised her eyes to look at him and found tears dripping from his cheeks and getting lost somewhere in his untrimmed beard.

"Jeff," she exhaled, feeling panic, of all things, at his emotional state. She sat up quicker than she should have and swung her legs over the side of the bed, reaching for his hands. He attempted ignoring the gesture, but gave in as she squirmed her fingers into his balled fists and stroking his thumbs with hers. "Jeff, I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault." He sniffed harshly, collecting himself just as she began to unravel. He didn't know it, but it _was _her fault. Entirely her fault. She'd chosen to destroy the Reapers, knowing that it was going to ruin all synthetic life, and EDI with it. "I just… It's like losing a piece of you, y'know?" He wasn't crying now, but he sounded so… lifeless. "She was the _Normandy, _and the _Normandy _was my life. And now…"

She tried to speak, but her throat was burning with words she didn't have the courage to say. The taste of the dust and ashes of the Citadel still lingered on her tongue. She pursed her lips, her teeth catching the flesh of the inside of her mouth and pinching it hard enough to draw blood. Her hands left his and raised to clutch his head between them. A kiss from her tense mouth was placed on his forehead, full of thousands of apologies she could never utter. She'd never shown him affection like this once in her entire life, but if there was a time for it, it was definitely now. The tears that had gathered in her eyes spilled over and dripped into his hair, but he'd never know.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, her voice thick.

"It's not your fault," his voice came again, muffled by her shoulder. She kissed his forehead again, wiping her tears before backing up into her bed and looking at him. She'd never seen him so tired. So defeated.

The war had broken the only spirit she'd even known to be unbreakable. And it was her fault.

She took a deep breath in. Understanding flushed through her; she had to tell him what she'd done, or the guilt was going to destroy her. She knew the consequences. Jeff was one to hold a grudge, and this would be the biggest of them all. Part of her hoped that their friendship could overcome her fault, but she doubted that. She'd taken the one source of happiness that he had left and destroyed it.

"Jeff," she murmured, knowing her words were going to kill him. "It _is _my fault."

He stared at her, silenced.

"I… I had to. The Reapers—the Crucible, I had to choose…"

He swallowed. "You _chose _to do this?"

"It was the only way. I had to destroy the Reapers, but it took all synthetic life with it, Jeff, I… I'm sorry." She fumbled with her words for some explanation that could justify her actions, but she only felt his gaze boring into her and digging her hole deeper with every second that passed.

His hands flexed in his lap. "You knew it would kill her, and you still did it?"

"It was the only way to save the—"

"Yeah, I get it, Shepard," he said bitterly. "But it's your… fault."

The word hit her harder than any blow or bullet he could have ever doled out. He was right.

"I'm so sorry."

"I followed you. I _follow you _into Hell itself, and this is what you do? After everything I did for you, no… after everything EDI did for you. She was alive, you gave her so much and then you just…" he rose from his seat, his rage escalating with every heaving breath that came in and out of his lungs. "You just killed her. Just like that."

She had nothing to say. Her body started to curl into itself, trying to make herself smaller in the space around her. "I didn't want this, you know that."

"I need to be alone. I just can't believe…" he exhaled, wiping a hand over his face. He started for the door. She could hear him exhale her name as he turned away from her.

"Jeff—"

"No," he killed her last attempt at an olive branch. "I'll see you, Commander."

She slumped against her pillows, not watching as he left. Hot tears streamed from the corners of her eyes and dripped down to pool near her ears. She'd failed, and probably lost a friend in the process. Her guilt had only multiplied exponentially in the process of confessing to Jeff. She hoped that Kaidan would be back soon so she could explain what happened. She tried not to think about what would happen once she told them what had happened to Anderson, too.

Destroying the Reapers had come with a heavy price, one perhaps too costly to bear. She shut her eyes and tried to block out the memories of EDI that had started to invade her mind.


	10. Chapter 10

"So I've been thinking…" Kaidan started, holding the spoon up for Shepard to take another bite of her food. She tried to take the spoon from his hand to feel herself, but he insisted with a withdrawing of his arm and an arched brow. In a huff, she gave up and allowed him to help her eat. She knew that he knew she hated needing help, but she needed it.

"Thinking? Sounds dangerous," she teased, causing him to roll his eyes.

"Seriously, Shepard. You've got two weeks left here, tops. Then they're kicking us out. Where are we going to go?"

She furrowed her brow, accepting another spoonful of mush. "I thought we'd agreed on Vancouver."

"Yes, but the place isn't in idea condition, especially not to bring you home in. I mean, it's outside of the metro area so it's not like it's blown to hell, but I'm sure it needs some cleaning up…" He sighed. "Which would be up to me."

"So we clean up when we get there, big deal." She reached for her cup of water, which he handed to her hastily.

"No," he started to correct her. "It's _my _problem, and I'm going to have it fixed before we get there. I think I'm going to go to Vancouver for a bit and fix the place up, while you're stuck here."

She thought about this for a moment. It wasn't so much the idea of her being alone that surprised her, but the thought that he was actually willing to leave her side for an extended period of time. No doubt he'd be checking in like a madman with her in the state she was, but he was willing to go to the opposite coast of the continent to make sure the house was suitable for the two of them to inhabit for the foreseeable future. She reclined in bed, slumping against her pillows and reaching up gingerly to run her fingers through her hair. "That'd be alright, I think. I wouldn't mind staying here alone."

"I'm sure Liara would stay, if you wanted her to. She probably wants to put her feet up anyway," he nearly laughed. It was true, Liara hadn't had a moment to breathe since Shepard arrived in the hospital. She was always informing, always communicating, always trying to figure some other piece of the puzzle out. She'd only had the chance to stop in to see Shepard a handful of times since she'd regained consciousness, and each time was brief and interrupted by some kind of call or message or transmission of someone somewhere with information for her. The war didn't stop the Shadow Broker, and the Shadow Broker would stop for nothing now that it was over. "I think we'd have to force her to sit down. Tie her to the chair."

Shepard laughed, the sound forced and wheezy with her lungs the way they were. "I'll call her later. We'll figure it out."

"I'm probably going to catch a shuttle tomorrow morning, if I can. Is that alright?"

She frowned, reaching to touch his chin. "Of course. You're worried, aren't you?"

"Well, yeah," he took her wrist and moved her hand to kiss her fingers one by one. "I don't want to leave you here like this."

"I'm fine, Kaidan. Really."

He opened her fingers and kissed her palm. "That's what you always say."

. . .

Kaidan picked up his bag and turned to Shepard. "Get better, alright? I'll call you as soon as I land, and I'll be back next week. Promise you'll take care of yourself."

"I promise, Kaidan. Go on, before you miss your shuttle." She nodded to the door, where Liara stood with her arms crossed, wearing her usual knowing smile. She looked up at him, focusing her eyes on his just as he stooped over and kissed her mouth with sweetness and longing, a bit more than usual. "I miss you already. Now go on." She smoothed her hand down the curve of his back, sneaking a tiny grab of his backside, causing his eyebrows to shoot up in surprise, and her devilish grin to spread across her face.

"I love you, Shepard."

She smiled, still. "I love you too, Kaidan."

"Take care of her for me, T'Soni," he regarded the asari with mock-assertion. "Any problems and I'll have to assume that it's you causing the trouble."

"But of course, Kaidan," she said, finally grinning. He gave her a short hug. "She's in good hands."

He nodded to both of them, his eyes lingering on Shepard for an extra moment, and then he was off down the hallway. Liara took this as her cue to enter the room and place her overnight bag at the foot of Shepard's bag. Her eyes were tired, but calm. Kind. There was something quiet about her, something that drew breath from the ruins of Earth, the ruins of the Citadel, the ruins of Thessia, and exhaled a sort of meditative hum over the air around her. Shepard had never seen her so peaceful.

"So, Shepard," she said, a smile in her voice although her face remained neutral. "How have you _really _been?"

She laughed quietly. "I could use a walk. Want to go for a walk?"

"There's nothing I would rather do."

Liara helped her up from the bed, being patient as ever as Shepard grunted and struggled with her body in the weak state it had taken on in recovery. She finally got to her feet, wheeled her IV tower to her with an iron grip, and smiled breathlessly, gesturing to the door with good spirit. Liara led the way, taking her out into the hall and notifying the nurse that they'd be taking a walk. When she turned her attention back to Shepard, she was already halfway down the hallway, half-walking and half-sliding with her slippers on. Somehow, she was still Commander Shepard. Demanding and powerful, goofy and clumsy, resillient and hopeful. Her injuries could never take that from her.

Liara finally caught up to the commander, a small smile still painted on her modest lips. "If you think you're getting away that easily, you have another thing coming to you, Shepard."

"If only it were that simple," she sighed dramatically, pushing her hair behind her ear with one hand. She walked on, not looking at her friend as she headed for the side of the floor that had floor-length windows that looked out over the city. After she'd left the ICU, she'd been moved up to the fourteenth floor. Depending on the number of patients that came in in the next two weeks, they said they might need to move her again, up to a higher floor. It didn't matter to her. She had to stare out at the remains of New York City either way, and it hurt just as much.

"Kaidan told me Jeff came to visit…" Liara interuppted their silence with a loaded statement that tapered off into tension.

A bitter laugh came from Shepard's closed mouth. "Yeah. I'm sure you've heard about EDI."

"Kaidan also told me you think it's your fault?" She caught Shepard's eyes, meeting them with a knowing look. She hated it when Liara did that, mostly because she was right.

"It is. You don't know what—"

She stopped Shepard in front of one of the tall windows, taking her free hand between both of hers. "Listen to me, Shepard. Whatever you had to do to end this war, you did it. And there should be no guilt in that."

"EDI, the Geth… all of them, artificial intelligence has been wiped from our lives. It's not permanent, sure, we can rebuild. But EDI's gone, and Jeff's miserable, and it's because of what I chose to do."

She squeezed Shepard's hand. "You chose to sacrifice the few for the many. Noble."

"I don't feel noble. But thanks." She closed the subject by turning to walk to a nearby bench to watch the shuttles flying, streaming between the ghostly skyscrapers of the destroyed city. She sat back on the bench, gliding her IV tower next to her and settling back into the cool hardness of the wall. Liara sat next to her, waiting for her to pick up the next leg of the conversation. Shepard could tell she was being more cautious than usual; everyone was when they were around her. But there was something else on Liara's mind, she could feel it. "I grew up in New York, y'know."

"I know."

"How did you—" she started without thinking, then immediately stammered to a stop. "Shadow Broker. Right. Makes the whole 'fucked up backstory' thing a little less fun, Liara."

"I'm sure I don't know the whole story."

Shepard let out a breath she suddenly felt she'd been holding in her chest for years. "You'd probably be disappointed. Much less glamorous than the Alliance years, when you first joined the team. That's who I am now."

She felt Liara's eyes on her. "But who were you then, Mallory?"

Her first name left a biting acidic taste in the back of her throat. She pressed the button on the IV tower for another dose of pain medication, but it wasn't time yet. Her hands folded themselves on her lap, her fingernails working to scratch at the small bits of healing skin on the sides of her thumbs. The topic made her nervous. She'd never divulged much information about her life to anybody before, not even Kaidan. He knew that she'd grown up in New York, he even heard Knox's name now and again, but nothing too personal. Nobody knew anything too personal because too much information was weakness. Shepard was stubborn; she didn't want anyone to know her weaknesses. Especially not the man she loved. She wondered how much Liara already knew. The only person that knew most of the story was Anderson, mostly because of Knox's hand in her recruitment into the Alliance in the first place, and that knowledge had died with him on the Citadel.

"You can have one story," she murmured, folding her arms over her chest. She still didn't look at her friend. Her stomach churned, her heart twisted uncomfortably in her chest, but she couldn't pinpoint why. A shuttle zoomed by, close to the window, then turned smoothly to weave between the buildings ahead. The building closest to the window they sat before had a huge burned chunk taken from the side, where a Reaper had made its mark. New York City hadn't been hit as hard as London or Vancouver, but it still took a lot of damage. Enough to shake the very foundations of the city.

Liara thought for a moment, weighing her choices. "How about… the first man you ever killed."

Shepard couldn't help but laugh, brows up in surprise. "You don't bother starting light, do you? No tattoo stories, love stories?"

"That's the boring stuff I know you'd lie about."

"You know me too well. Alright, well... I was thirteen when I killed my first man."

. . .

_It was a rountine gig. Take the package for payment, go to the old warehouse on Seventeenth West, give it to the guy with the octopus tattoo, who Knox referred to as "Octopus Tattoo" for her sake, and take the backpack back to the compound on Tenth Street. Easy enough. She'd done it dozens of times, and they'd never given her any trouble on either end. Either the dealers knew better than to fuck with the Reds, or they didn't have the heart to fuck with a little girl. It didn't matter to her, as long as nothing happened that landed her in hot water. _

_Besides, she wasn't a little girl. She was growing like a "fuckin' beanstalk" as Knox liked to say, complaining about how there weren't enough hand-me-downs for a kid as tall and skinny as her. She cut her hair short, wore old shoes with holes in the sides, and jeans that were frayed at the ankles and knees. It was good enough for her; she liked life with the Reds. There were days when it was scary, where she'd wake up to the sound of screaming or gunfire or drunken fights, but three years had proved long enough for her to adjust to the chaos. It gave her a rush she'd never felt before, adrenaline coming and going fast enough to give her whiplash. Knox looked out for her, made sure she didn't get into anything she didn't need to get into. Drugs were off-limits, and so was the booze. Everything else, though, was fair game. Her tame childhood wore off faster than she ever imagined it would. She loved running errands for the gang, passing secret messages by running through the streets, avoiding the police skycars and stealing bottles of drink and candies from street vendors right under their noses. _

_Knox made sure to take care of her, but he wasn't a babysitter. Mallory took care of herself. _

_This errand wasn't uncommon to her. She approached the warehouse and entered from the side door like she usually did in her bi-monthly trek to Seventeenth West. "Hello?" she called out, her voice swallowed up by the cavernous nature of the empty place. Two men came out of the back with a backpack. _

_They met her and she handed him the package of credits. His partner examined its contents, counting them meticulously as she waited for the bag to be handed over. She glanced at the belt of the man with the octopus tattoo and the glint of a silver pistol chilled her to the bone. She often forgot how dangerous these things could be. _

"_One thousand short," the skinnier man said, looking at Mallory with disgust. "Probably pocketed it for herself." _

"_No! No, I didn't, here, I'll take it back. I'll tell Knox—" she stammered, holding her hands in front of her. _

"_That won't be necessary." Octopus Tattoo took the envelope and tucked it into his jacket. "Run along. Tell Ryker not to fuck with the Eights again." His partner turned to leave, the backpack still in his hand._

"_Hey! I can't leave with nothing!" She stood with defiance, adrenaline rushing on cue to puff up her sudden rush of bravery. _

"_Little girl's got a mouth on her, huh?" Before she could protest the use of 'little girl', his partner had her in his meaty hands, gripping her with intent to take her somewhere she no doubt didn't want to be. "Listen to me, sweetheart." He took the gun from his side and smoothed two fingers over the barrel, using it to tip her chin up to him. "I really don't want to use this thing, but I will if I have to. You go back to Tenth Street, tell Ryker that our prices went up and this is his last fuckin' warning. You get me?"'_

_She responded by promptly spitting in his face. His partner jerked her to the side as Octopus Tattoo wiped the spit from his eyes. She swung her leg forward, then back into the crotch of the man holding her. He released her, crouching to the floor in an attempt to recover. She slapped the gun from Tattoo's grip and tried knocking the wind out of him with a punch. The attack did nothing. As he moved to grab her again, every nerve in her body rushed at once. Acting without permission from her better thoughts, she slammed him to the wall with a biotic attack, leaving him limp and suspended in the air. She blinked as she met the eyes of her attacker, just as shocked as she was. _

"_Fuckin' hell, she's a biotic?" his partner exclaimed, just standing from the kick he'd received. She reached down and scooped the gun into her free hand, pointing it to him as she held the other man in her field still. "Shit, man, I'm getting out of here." _

_She let him go. But that didn't solve the problem of Octopus Tattoo, who had gone from the initial shock of discovering she was a human biotic to full rage that a kid had him in a hold like this. Even so, her strength was draining fast. He fell to the floor, crashing into a few boxes on his way down. "You're gonna pay for that, kid! Nobody fucks with me and gets away with it!" _

_He lunged to grab the gun from her. On reflex, her finger jerked quickly and she pulled the trigger. The man stumbled back, clutching the red spot on his chest that was starting to blossom into a wound. She stared at the blood, putting the gun down on the ground and watching as he came to rest on the floor, a few breaths wheezing out of him before he started to gurgle with what she assumed would be blood. She couldn't bring herself to look at him. _

_She pulled up her omni-tool, struggling with the controls until she could get it to call Knox. _

"_What is it, kid?" _

"_Knox—I'm at the… Seventeenth, I… oh no, Knox—" she stammered helplessly, feeling the shock starting to creep over her. _

"_Mal? Alright, just… stay where you're at. I'll be there." _

_He arrived minutes later, panting from likely running from Tenth Street to get to her. He surveyed the scene and saw the blood, a long breath pushing from his lungs. He picked up the envelope and the gun, tucking them into his jacket. Mallory was huddled up on the floor, tears streaming down her face, looking lifeless and shocked at the same time. He tried to help her up, but she wouldn't move. _

"_Alright, kid…" he whispered, tucking her messy hair behind her ear. He lifted her up and carried her out the back door, creeping through alleyways to get her back safely. _

. . .

Liara said nothing as she finished her story. Shepard gazed out the window, remembering the buildings as they looked twenty years ago, lumbering over her and shining in the too-bright light of the sun.

"Knox Ryker was a good man. He did horrible, terrible things to so many people, but he was good to me."

"Was he the one to tell you to hide your biotics?" Liara asked, sounding genuinely curious more than anything else.

"My parents did. I was exposed to Element Zero early on, shuttle crash outside of the city where we lived. I got the implants as a precaution, just for medical reasons, I guess. But I wasn't allowed to use them. Knox didn't know for two years, maybe. I was good at hiding them."

Liara nodded, not knowing what else there was to say. "You were brave from a young age."

She looked out at the windows, remembering the Reapers' great claws covering the buidings there, thousands of people in each one. "I had to be."


End file.
